


Library of Fear

by Nausicaa_E



Series: The A. E. Doyle Library [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: An answer to the question 'What if I was super sexy and ruled over my own domain of fear?', Being unable to escape destructive patterns, Gen, Horror, Names Have Been Changed To Protect The Innocent, Post-Apocalypse, Self-Hatred, Self-Insert, mild RPF, tma s5 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:01:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23878078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nausicaa_E/pseuds/Nausicaa_E
Summary: The A. E. Doyle Library undergoes a change, after the world ends. The Librarian takes well to her new responsibilities.
Series: The A. E. Doyle Library [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722571
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Library of Fear

There is a library.

There is a city outside the library, full of faceless things that hide behind bright smiles and friendly language and the fashions of the day, and refuse to listen when you tell them what they are replacing. Spiders march through the city, stringing webs of debt, of drugs, of renown, of love, promising security from the terrible changes outside, if you're willing to accept the price. Apartment complexes fill with mist, fill with distance, replacing everything their inhabitants used to distract from the loneliness.

Inside the library, you could almost think it is safe. People wear costumes, not disguises. Bargains are laid out clearly, and you can always close the book and escape. People gather together for stories and write them together. You might be able to ignore the well-dressed figure perched like a carrion crow in the sculpture in the foyer, with a sympathetic microphone ready to hear what you've been through outside, and to analyze and dissect it and fit it into a larger pattern among the branches of that bronze tree. You might be able to ignore the way that the books and the stacks twist, how words in a book might blur and change, how you're _sure_ you know where a book is but the stacks stubbornly refuse to offer it up, how sometimes there are walls where there weren't walls before, and that the person with the too-wide smile is definitely _not_ one of the library staff. You might be able to ignore the prickle on the back of your neck in the stacks, how you feel compelled to get to the end of a book before something else gets to you, how sometimes a quiet murmur will morph into the barking of thirty hounds, how a serpent's head will snap at you out of a fairytale or a knife will stab from a murder mystery, how you cannot shake the sense that in this Labyrinth of books there lurks a Minotaur that wants nothing more than to catch your scent and devour you.

But you would not be able to ignore the Librarian.

She is not a threatening figure, in a collared shirt (with the buttons that follow you around the room) and skinny jeans (the color of the ink that scrawls across her skin) crowned with a messy bun (hair that swirls and tangles and curls into the shapes of eyes). She is warm, and kind, and loves to talk about what you've been reading, and other works in the genre. She reassures you that what you're reading isn't _real_ , or, even if it's nonfiction, is still at a remove from all the things out there. In a normal library, she would be a gift, always there to answer questions, to talk about stories and why we make them. You might even start to think of her as a friend.

But this is not a normal library, and she is not your friend.

The library has an ordinary collection, but it is limited in scope. It would be easy to read through all the classics, the popular titles, the simple fictions that let you escape the horror outside -- especially when your eyes never droop, your stomach never growls, your throat never parches, your body never needs rise to use the bathroom. And then you'd get bored -- bored enough to seek out the expansive _special_ collection.

This is a library devoted to the macabre, to the exploration of humanity's fascination with fear, to understanding how we tell stories in order to contain the terror and make it safe enough to handle. But as the words that dance across the Librarian's skin remind you, humans are creatures of stories, and our facility with language gives our stories the ability to lodge in the mind and fill us with visions that squeeze around our hearts as much as if they were real. (The person who is not one of the library staff will sometimes join in on such discussions, and grins the wider as doubt seeps into the conversation.) And those poor souls sheltering in the library are _very_ human … and _very_ full of stories.

Poor souls like Sarah.

Sarah escaped one of the webs outside. (She hopes.) It promised such lovely things. (She tries to convince herself they weren't worth it.) But the Librarian appeared, and wielded logic like a pair of scissors, and told her that there was no need to spin forever in this new world of terror -- and really, wouldn't it be better if she stayed human, in the company of friends? Sarah thinks of herself as a fairly resilient person, and tells herself that she's just having fun and relaxing with the horrors she reads through. She may well be correct. She certainly is _very_ relaxed, and she doesn't at all feel the gnawing shame of doing nothing but relaxing and consuming stories, especially not when the Librarian appears and breaks her out of her reverie, and she feels caught.

For their part, Leo _can't_ relax, and knows it. In a world where entropy happens only at the whim of the new gods of fear, all their facility with cooking and cleaning and mending has melted away, and they feel so _very_ small and helpless. So they turn to the one thing they're still good at: history. The library has page after page of history, of atrocities committed and the small mercies that make them bearable. Those small mercies make Leo keep turning the pages, keep watching more and more terrors, and as the present ticks into the past, the horrors of the new world outside begin to seep into their reading. (They can't turn back to the love-stories they used to enjoy. Romance simply looks at them with scorn, saying their past is not yet forgotten.)

Forrest is fine in the fiction section. Forrest doesn't have problems with rereading; he's happy to lose himself in the same worlds again and again, reading about languages, and worlds, and tries to construct them. But Forrest … doesn't measure up. He has his laptop, he has all the time he needs to make new things, but he can't make any world as enticing as the ones he reads about. He can't make anything that makes the heart sing with wonder, or even fear. Which is why Forrest doesn't share anything. He can't risk people knowing that he doesn't measure up. He jokes, and promises, and dies of shame whenever he meets someone's eye.

Gina's used to not sharing. (Gina would have been just fine in an enormous apartment full of mist and nobody.) What Gina hates about the library is that other readers -- and _especially_ the _Librarian_ \-- keep asking her questions, about how things make her _feel_ , how they can _accommodate_ her, how they can _help_. In the library, there's nowhere to hide, no matter how much you think you've found a cozy nook to read and read forever, even if you hate what you're reading: Gina is watched, eternally, by people who see her in her weakness and her shame and refuse to _do_ anything about it other than keep asking questions, forcing her to confront the awful truth that hiding from her problems does nothing.

For Ellis, confronting awful truths is the order of the day. (It's hard not to be, as a biologist in the 21st century.) Ellis thinks that learning about the horror will help people figure out how to stop it. So Ellis, in a world where biology no longer holds fast, tries to develop a new science for this new world. They read about horror, historic, modern, and that which belongs to the new world of terror, conversing with the Librarian about human reactions to fear and working with the Journalist in the tree to build theories. Ellis is on a hunt for information, and will not cease in their pursuit, no matter how many new horrors they find with their research, no matter how impossible their task seems. (No matter whether or not they find their quarry.)

So, there is a library.

There is a library, packed full of terrified readers, each one venturing through a thousand private hells, then closing the cover to offer up their exegesis to the warmly smiling Librarian at their arm before starting all over again. Should a reader rise from their comfortable chair to seek out new tales, or, gods forbid, _leave_ , the twisting halls of the library contain horrors enough to make the shelves of books a welcome escape. And that Librarian, when she glances out of the windows at the tower of the Panopticon and submits to the scathing scrutiny of her god, knows that its gaze is one of approval.

**Author's Note:**

> The A. E. Doyle Library is a fan-cousin to The Magnus Institute, home to me and my friends working through Some Feelings about fear. While the Institute focuses on personal experience - statements - of horror, the Library focuses on how people cope with horror - their narratives.  
> After the world goes to shit ... it can operate independently.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Necropolis Ltd.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23897728) by [mikawritesthings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikawritesthings/pseuds/mikawritesthings)




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